The previous column in this series looked at the Israeli government’s concern about the risk of the pro-Palestinian leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, winning a general election and becoming prime minister.

Israel’s worry contrasts with an otherwise more favourable international environment, its most reassuring element the strong support from Trump and Pence’s White House (see “Netanyahu’s Corbyn problem“, 31 August 2018).

7 September 2018 (IOM)* – “We wanted to go to Germany by any means necessary; I had heard that [they were] good to refugees. I had a car in Iraq and I owned a store for repairing bicycles and motorbikes; I sold everything to collect US$20,000.

Like this:

6 September 2018 (UN Environment)* – Mer de Glace”, or Sea of Ice, is France’s largest glacier and the second largest in the Alps. Located in the Mont Blanc massif, the glacier lies above the Chamonix valley and is surrounded by majestic peaks, such as Aiguille du Moine, Aiguille du Charmez and the famous Aiguille du Midi.

In addition to admiring its natural beauty, there is one more reason one should visit Mer de Glace: to see climate change in action. “Mer de Glace is a true eye-opener,” says Kateryna Shornikova, of UN Environment’s Europe Office, who visited the glacier recently. “It helps understand what climate change means in real life.”

Like all glaciers, Mer de Glace is in continuous motion. The 200-metre-deep glacier flows for 7 km down the northern side of Mont Blanc, at a rate of about one centimetre per hour.

Emergency food supplies for hundreds of thousands of people in Syria’s Idlib are “ready for distribution” in the event of mass displacement caused by a full-scale military offensive on the last opposition-held region, the World Food Programme (WFP) on 7 September 2018 said.

UNICEF | A child sitting at a desk in a school that was attacked, in Idlib, Syria. 2016.

With the ingredients for a “perfect storm” brewing in the Syrian province of Idlib, the international community cannot allow civilians there to succumb to such a fate, the UN Envoy for the country on 7 September 2018 told the Security Council.

Virginia Gamba, the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, on 7 September 2018 called for much greater accountability and effort, to prevent grave violations against children across the world’s youngest nation, South Sudan.

UNMISS/Isaac Billy | Former child soldiers are released in Yambio in South Sudan in February 2018.

Speaking in the capital Juba, at the end of four-day mission to the country, she said that in 2017, close to 1,400 children had been directly affected, with thousands more bearing the brunt of conflict. Gamba called on those in authority to take concrete action to end the violations and prevent any recurrence.

Around 150 million school children aged 13-15 are the victims of violence from their peers, says a new report from the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.

UNICEF/Adriana Zehbrauskas | In Villanueva, Honduras, Darwin, 16, sits in the classroom he shared with his friend Henry. Henry committed suicide in September 2016. According to a teacher, the close friends were targeted by bullies.

The study published on 6 September 2018, measures the number of students who report having been bullied over the period of a month, or involved in a physical fight during the previous year, and shows that for many young people, the school environment is not a safe place, but a danger zone where they have to learn in fear.